One Response for "More state pupils head to Oxford - some questions"

1. Richard Gillin March 12th, 2009 at 1:07 pm 1

   I missed the original article; as an alumnus from a state selective school (just a few miles away from your school, in fact!) I was interested. I am always torn when I read these between (a) wanting equality of access and (b) not watering down standards. I still don’t think they’ve got it quite right in terms of admission. I was there back in the days of the old entrance exam with an EE offer if you passed that and the interview - I am sure that coaching in a small class of equally bright boys helped me (if only for exam practice). Certainly the interview process could be daunting if you weren’t used to that sort of environment. But reliance purely on A-level predictions is no alternative - when you add up the number of people predicted to get (say) four As (in old money - not sure what that is in new money!) it is considerably more than the entire Oxbridge intake. What is needed is some sort of clearer test of actual potential for universitites to rely on; plus some clearer acknowledgement that Oxbridge is not the be all and end all. I’ll be struck down for saying this, but in several subjects (including mine, Maths), there are stronger places like Imperial.

   Certainly, in response to your questions:
   - For the first and second, I have no idea if Comprehensive students do better / worse these days. Certainly in my day there my college was about 50:50 state/private (no idea on selective state vs comprehensive) - and there was only one drop out who was from a private school. Bizarrely, I think that the current A / AS model might help as a slightly wider range of subjects works better when you are in effect forced to mix with a wider range of subjects than you might as your natual peer group is the college, not the subject group - being able to be interested in something other than maths helped my social life, and hence happiness, no end. Conversely some people unable to relate outside their subject found life unhappy, and in the end dropped out (from other, larger, colleges).
   - On the third, I have never seen any data and would love to know the answer. Of course, it is hard to measure “success” - salary? esteem? status? Plus the sample responding is self-selecting - people who are more succesful are probably less likely to move jobs as often, so more likely to be tracked down by researchers. Long term research would be interesting.
   - On the fourth, I think that simply visiting the place and meeting those from similar establishments is vital. And the university ought to work out a way to subsidise such visits for those schools and prospective students who can’t afford it (the Cambridge open day was easy for me - 18 boys in a school minibus for free - but what about one boy wanting to go from further afield?). Plus to the extent there is any form of selection test (e.g. entrance exams / aptitude tests) there needs to be e-learning / e-tuition / e-practice exams to mean that the lack of critical mass in any one school doesn’t lead to a disadvantage in preparation.

   Oh, and more encouragement for ex-Oxbridge types to go into teaching too!